Mr. McCain has been criticized on his drilling proposal by environmental commentators. Senator Barack Obama commented on the drilling idea on Tuesday, saying: “Much like his gas-tax gimmick that would leave consumers with pennies in savings, opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best since America only has 3 percent of the world’s oil. It’s another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil.”
Mr. Obama has not made climate and energy a front-tier issue for the most part, although his proposals are laid out in detail on his campaign site. His stance on climate is similar to Mr. McCain’s, with both seeking legislation involving cap-and-trading mechanisms to cut greenhouse gas emissions (with slightly different targets and timing). (UPDATE: The “Cunctator” at hillheat.com admonished me to make clear that Mr. Obama calls for a much broader suite of mandatory steps on efficiency and the like, and I agree that’s an important distinction.) But they differ deeply on oil — and on nuclear power, with Mr. Obama calling for no expansion until the familiar issues, including waste disposal, are sorted out, while Mr. McCain would try to accelerate the construction of new plants.

On offshore drilling, I checked in with Peter Maass, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine who is working on a book on oil and who wrote a provocative column in 2005 calling for resumption of American coastal drilling — but not for the reasons Mr. McCain is pushing for it.

Mr. Maass decried the environmental and social messes that have resulted in other parts of the world as oil companies drilled elsewhere — from the Amazon to Africa — when the American public turned against drilling here after a spill off the coast of California.

I asked if he still feels that way. Here’s what he said:

Andy, I still feel the same way, but my rationale for allowing drilling wasn’t (isn’t) the same as McCain and others, who support it to increase oil supplies and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The increments offered by ANWR and offshore are useful but aren’t going to do much to bring down the price of oil or lessen our dependence on the Saudis and Russians — certainly not now, and probably not much in the future, when those increments come online and do little more, probably, than offset declines in older American fields. So let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that opening up ANWR and the coasts of Florida and California would be a big deal in terms of addressing the oil-supply problem we face. It’s useful, but a very small wedge. My main reasoning is that there’s no justification, other than selfishness, for tearing up the rest of the world’s habitats in our search for oil and gas while preserving our own. Taking a global view, there’s an advantage to drilling in our backyard, if drilling must be done — it will be carried out with a level of environmental care that does not exist in Africa and many other places where regulatory oversight is not as strict as here (which is not to say that American regulators are as strict as they can and should be). And maybe, by being forced to suffer some of the environmental harm and inconvenience of our dependence on oil, we’ll have yet another reason to quicken our transition toward conservation and renewable energy.

Is it fair to outsource our environmental problems — banishing even debate about drilling here while still drilling elsewhere (even as we start to find ways to use less oil, and eventually none)?

I wonder if anyone would like to comment on the irrationality of Obama’s point on holding off on new nuclear plants “until the problems of storage are sorted out”. The existing plants, many of which have been in operation for decades mostly continue to hold their high level nuclear waste on-site. So new plants could presumably hold many more years worth of waste on-site than existing plants, since they start with an inventory of zero.

Has Obama taken any action to resolve the problem of long-term storage?

So far, his campaign has ridden the wave of hopes others place on him while his own policy prescriptions are largely empty of any promise because they are not in any way balanced (you’ll note up and down the line his solutions are of largely the most leftist sort) and he has virtually no record of accomplishment, nor of working across party lines.

I asked a while back (then asked again) if anyone thinks AGW is a top-line issue, something he’d address in the first 100 days and to date I’ve gotten mostly grumbling that my questions weren’t timely.

Since Obama seems content not to address controversial issues, I guess we’ll never have that timely moment. We’ve had a couple of posts by our host on McCain, but none that I can recall that deals specifically with anything Obama has said. Mostly because he never says anything worth commenting on.

Okay, so you all can get on with calling McCain a reactionary continuer of Bushism. No need to ask Obama any hard questions which we know he’ll freeze up on.

As for McCain’s drilling proposal, I had a rather long back and forth of e-mails with several conservative friends of mine today on the issue. Most of them want to drill yesterday. I argued the opposite, mainly out of generational concerns.

In contrast to Peter Maass, I’d rather hold off for a while on drilling for more domestic oil, even though doing so is more environmentally responsible than simply buying cheap oil produced elsewhere, since the value of that resource is only likely to increase over time. It will be drilled for, eventually, and should be, eventually. But we ought to consider leaving a little in the tank, so to speak, for later generations.

Also, any incremental efforts to lower world oil prices will only facilitate the increased consumption of oil by the emerging economies, so there’s little to be gained in the short run and a lot to be lost in the long run.

But McCain has to do this to shore up his base. Meanwhile his opponent is free to ignore the issue completely since nobody really wants to know what he thinks. And thanks to his fear of joint appearances, we won’t see him facing much in the way of difficult questions between now and November.

As for the criticism for McCain wanting to build non-carbon capturing coal plants, since we’re going to be burning coal for decades by any estimate, if we implement a carbon restrictive regime, wouldn’t we want to allow industry to build new plants that are more efficient than the current fleet? There has to be some balance in any responsible energy proposal. Or we could just hope that Obama, who is for all the good things and against all the bad things, will will us to a new age by virtue of his personal goodness.

Yep, I support ANWR drilling for the same reason Peter Maass does: to force people to confront the real costs of resource extraction by having it done in their back yard. In fact, Alaska is too far away. We should drill in California, Colorado, everywhere. Same goes for coal mining.

The Chinese and others are going to start drilling off the shores of Florida, Cuba, and Brazil here anyway in the very near future. I think we are very lucky to live where we do, but conserve to a point for Christ Sake. We use everyone else in the world and exploit their lands, labor, etc. We need to find a ballance of drilling off the shores of the U.S. and PUT ALL OF OUR ENERGY INTO finding other alternative fuels at the same time and becoming independent. We know now how dependent we are on other nations so lets move on both ends here at home. If Obama becomes elected NOTHING will happen. That guy is all talk. He wants to CHANGE but is a people pleaser too. That doesn’t go together!

If it really takes ten years to get anything out of drilling shouldn’t we start now, because if we wait till the last minute till we really really need it, we won’t have it, since as Obama says it takes ten years to get anything out of it.

Obama has no experience on anything the only thing he has to his credit is that he was against the Iraq war. Still that doesn’t hold much weight because saying you are against war, when you aren’t even in the position to vote on it is ridiculous. If he was in the US senate when the vote to go to Iraq happened he would’ve went along with Hilary and everyone else.

Obama is a joke who decided that 25 months experience in congress at the federal level is enough to become president. We’ve already had a president with little experience before becoming president, his name is George W Bush.

The most practical plans involve improving requirements for performance, and include preventing gas hog cars and trucks from being permitted onto the roads at all, much to the anger of the adolescents who HAVE to have a car that gets 10 MPG because THEY can afford it. Making companies have an AVERAGE mileage of 30 MPG in 2012 doesnt address the Lamborgini’s and Dodge Rams with 440 HP getting 10 MPG. Those have to be outlawed.

Improving train service is a long range solution that is more cost effective than a trillion dollar war.

Obama is an economic imbecile. Adding 3% to the worlds supply will reduce prices. Here’s how it woks. Let’s say we use 100 barrels of a day and the current world output is 100 barrels a day. In that scenario there is no excess supply so prices can rise dramatically even if there is a hint of undersupply. If, on the other hand, we produce 103 barrels (3% additional) we have an excess supply and prices will come down.

Senator Obama’s and most liberal comments that the TRILLIONS of dollars of domestic oil will not satisfy domestic needs and therefore shouldn’t be used sounds like telling a starving man that because he doesn’t have enough for a really good meal so he shouldn’t eat at all. Perhaps the $1.4 TRILLION under 3 square miles of ANWR will not satisfy domestic needs however it will do better then nothing. The problem we are living with now is such self defeating logic has locked up 400 billion barrels of technologically recoverable domestic oil. It is time to use what we have and prepare for an oil nuclear and hydrogen future.

Thanks for your connection to Peter Maass’ article. I think he’s dead on re: a couple issues – the contributions from ANWR and coastal fields will likely not boost our annual oil production rate but rather offset the decline in future production to some degree. Also, if you are going to produce oil anywhere, American environmental laws will ensure that any drilling will produce less environmental damage than in other locales.

At first, I was thinking “Why didn’t people make these connections 10 years ago? That oil could be online today and be adding to our current production rate.” However, it would probably have put off the inevitable decline in production. And it would also have depressed oil prices and thus increased oil consumption.

But I think few people appreciate the fact that people reduce their commodity consumption in response to rising commodity prices. To a degree. As a home energy inspector, I inspected about 2,000 homes and found that the easy, very cost-effective measures were very attractive, but the longer term, less cost-effective measures didn’t have any “sex appeal” and probably wouldn’t ever get implemented.

So, what I’m getting at is that today’s high prices, which are high due to: increasing oil demand; stupid American monetary policies that are now degrading the value of the dollar; and the fact that the oil price is denominated in dollars so that the U.S. is forced to pay more of our income for oil. (The rest of the world, due to their more favorable exchange rates, aren’t facing the same impacts on their incomes.) This will result in even better spontaneous energy efficiencies in the U.S., and hopefully the rest of the world.

Over here, we’re already seeing this happen – more carpooling, more public transit use, reduced travel for holidays/vacations, the Hummers and SUV’s are sitting on the dealer lots unsold – these are rational, spontaneous decisions. And will result in increasing American resistance to major AGW initiatives. Our fossil fuel demand will probably stabilize or decrease for each unit of economic production.

First, AGW’ers wanted to focus on the U.S. being the biggest CO2 generator. Now that China has grabbed that spotlight, AGW’ers want to shift the focus to per capita carbon footprints. But since China will overwhelm our per capita footprint in only 14 years and the E.U.’s in just 5 years, that won’t hold water with the American public. And now, we have a new energy-use-per-dollar-of-GDP metric that makes China’s CO2 production rate look like the equivalent of a drunken sailor’s proclivities compared to the U.S.’s China will now be exposed to the world as a country that’s raping the planet in the pursuit of growth. In the U.S., that will resonate.

Senator Obama’s and most liberal’s comments that the TRILLIONS of dollars of domestic oil will not satisfy needs and therefore shouldn’t be used sounds like telling a starving man that because he doesn’t have enough for a really good meal so he shouldn’t eat at all. Perhaps the $1.4 TRILLION under 3 square miles of ANWR will not satisfy domestic requirements but it will still do better then nothing. The problem we are living with now is such self defeating logic has locked up 400 billion barrels of technologically recoverable domestic oil. It is time to use what we have and prepare for an oil nuclear and hydrogen future.

I favor Obama’s stance on energy in every category except for his position on nuclear waste. We need nuclear plants as quickly as possible to begin the phase out dirty coal plants and to start to think seriously about mass produced, American made electric cars. Waiting for a safe solution for nuclear waste sounds like political posturing and saying two things at once. Obama is a fan of wind energy, but according to a professor at the University of Virginia, in order to create as much energy as one coal plant, we’d need wind arrays covering a land mass the size of Tennessee.

In January 2008 Scientific American published “A Solar Grand Plan” here//www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
that describes how solar energy could supply 69 percent of US electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
The authors further predict that renewable resources could supply 100 percent of US electricity and over 90 percent of total energy by 2100. Solar power would comprise over 85 percent of this total, with the remainder coming from wind power and smaller amounts of geothermal energy and biomass-based fuels. The numbers assume a one percent annual increase in energy demand, and no new technological innovations after 2020.
The total cost is estimated at $420 billion ($10.5 billion per year for 40 years), ending in 2050. The money would be generated by a carbon tax of 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, raising the cost of electricity (currently 6-10 cents per kWh) to 6.5-10.5 cents per kWh. The annual expense would be less than the current US Farm Price Support program. It would also be less than the tax subsidies responsible for building the country’s high-speed telecommunications infrastructure over the past 35 years.
Investing in Scientific American’s “Solar Grand Plan” would make the US more energy-independent, provide solar industry jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, and drastically reducing CO2 emissions for the benefit of all.
Solar power is the only renewable resource capable of satisfying such large-scale demands for energy. Read the SCIAM article and its several hundred comments (including many responses by the authors) to learn the details.

An ENORMOUS difference between Obama and McCain: McCain opposes any federal financial support for clean energy like wind and solar. Obama has pledged $150 billion.

This isn’t just a question of what they’d do as president. As a Senator, McCain has failed to support votes to extend the tax credits that have been the driving force behind the expansion of clean energy in the U.S.

Up until a few years ago, this country’s strength was based upon innovation. Now it is based upon reruns and a service economy. More of the same, and “…would you like fries with that, sir?”

Instead of digging for more of the same (e.g. offshore drilling), why hasn’t big industry invested in other technologies? There are two small companies that have demonstrated reason for hope in the auto industry: one is building a better battery, one that has around 4 times the capacity with the same footprint as today’s auto batteries; the other company has built, and is now selling a 2 seater, fully electric vehicle with a reported 200 mile plus range (that’s about twice the current range of a Rav4 EV).

My question is, if these small companies can do it, why not the big auto makers? If Japan’s cars squeeze more miles out of a gallon of gasoline, why can’t our big auto makers do the same or better?

I do not see the problem… the technology has been proved. Maybe it is a matter of money. The big auto makers know that, if they produce pure electric vehicles, their after-market gets financially screwed. And, if economic conditions force the big auto makers to start making and selling pure electric vehicles, will they sabotage the vehicle with deliberate built-in obsolence?

You have no idea, the amount of damage that has been done in foreign countries by texaco and shell. These people turned the water supply into poison, people dying a slow death from cancer. I just watched a show last week on sundance channel where shell had people killed, because the people were pissed off that shell was pumping toxic sludge into the river. Do you have any idea whats going on in W. Virginia. They have to truck water into that state in certain places because of Mountain Top mining for coal. People were turning on their water and it came out black. They had people with cancer, poison sickness, operations taking tumors out. Some people just don’t care as long as it’s not them. There is NOT enough oil in the U.S. to make any difference in oil prices. What has McCain been doing in politics the last 20 years. All of them knew this was coming. He supports trade deals that are taking our jobs. Those deals are for oil. I didn’t hear a peep out of McCain before he was running for president. What a leader, wait till we get 11 trillion in the hole before he says something.

We are in the beginning of a transition period but we still need oil to power certain sections of our economy as we make the changes. It’s absolutely idiotic not to allow drilling for our own oil in the meantime.

The low balling of expectations is par for the course and I view all those ‘it won’t do any/much good anyway’ arguments with complete skepticism.

The alarmists did their job toooooo well and now we’re in a heap of trouble. You’re going to have to give in on more drilling, like it or not.

This article minimizes what credibly could be the largest challenge in dealing with climate change: Holding the atmosphere to a CO2 content no greater than 450 PPM to prevent an increase of no more than 2 degrees C, beyond which runaway growth in CO2 could occur from natural sources. That requires an 80% reduction below 1990 levels.

From Barack Obama’s website: Obama supports implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

As BHO has to (and more importantly the electorate) come to face the rather poor record of judgement calls he so famously would have liked to exploit, the tide will turn. His abysmaly poor calll on the surge is the most glaring to date. He wont visit the troops but for a carefully controlled photo op. (the troops I dare say would have scant use for him there)! I see him, as we get closer to the big day, having been caught several times in the raw light of bad calls thus trashing his “judgement” credential! Back to school for you fella!
PS; Barack Hussein Obama’s comment about having taken foreign-diplomacy-studies in college as evidence of experience is just plain laughable. Judgement??? Anybody, anybody?

Tenney please go visit the windfarms in Mass and show that they have made any substantial change in our power grid. There is no present cost effective clean energy source which can get us off our knees from foreign oil. We have plenty of energy here in coal and oil.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.